基于语境的预期推理构建的实验研究

两个实验用移动视窗技术,用目标句阅读时间和命名探测词两种指标来考察当文本中有两个情境模型时,读者是否会即时进行预期推理。结果表明,如果在支持性语境与引发推理的信息之间插入一个与支持性语境所描述的情境模型不同的,且与主人公目标有关的因果链上的情境模型的信息,则不管这个插入的情境模型在文本中的位置如何,也不管干扰信息的干扰水平高低,都会降低因果性预期推理在阅读中产生的可能性。     

Argumentation Schemes in Persuasive Brochures

Many public information documents attempt to persuade the recipients that they should engage in or refrain from specific behaviour. This is based on the assumption that the recipient will decide about his or her behaviour on the basis of the information given and a rational evaluation of the pros and cons. An analysis of 20 public information brochures shows that the argumentation in persuasive brochures is often not marked as such. Argumentation is presented as factual information, and in many instances the task of making argumentational links and drawing conclusions is left to the reader. However, since the information offered does follow familiar argumentational schemes, readers can, in principle, reconstruct the argument. All the brochures make use of pragmatic argumentation (argumentation from consequences),i. e.,they formulate at least certain benefits of the desirable behaviour or disadvantages of the undesirable behaviour. In addition, they make regular use of argumentation from cause to effect and argumentation from example. Argumentation from rules and argumentation from authority are less frequently used. This empirical analysis of the use of argumentation schemes is a solid base for interesting and rich hypotheses about the cognitive processing of persuasive brochures. Central processing requires the reader to be able to reconstruct argumentation from informational texts and to identify and evaluate various types of argumentation.     

Responsibility and Manipulation

I address various critiques of the approach to moral responsibility sketched in previous work by Ravizza and Fischer. I especially focus on the key issues pertaining to manipulation. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

其它可能原因对于因果共变信息作用的影响

研究使用相继呈现信息的方法控制了被试获得信息的顺序,将其它可能原因在因果判断过程中所起到的作用分离了出来,并按照其对不同共变信息的影响进行了分析。研究结果表明：(1)其它可能原因会影响到被试利用因果共变信息而进行的因果推断。(2)其它可能原因与待判断原因共同存在的程度在很大程度上影响着其它可能原因所起到的作用。(3)其它可能原因对于不同共变信息的影响有着明显的差别。     

Alternatives to Randomized Experiments

ABSTRACT— Randomized experiments are preferred for making inferences about causality when they can be implemented and their assumptions are met. Yet assumptions can fail (e.g., attrition, treatment noncompliance) or randomization may be unethical or infeasible. I describe alternative design and statistical approaches that permit testing causal hypotheses and present current empirical evidence related to alternative designs. Alternative designs permit a wider range of research questions to be answered and permit more direct generalization of causal effects; however, when using such designs, estimates of the magnitude of the causal effect may be more uncertain.     

特征相似性、类别标签与因果关系在归纳推理中的作用

采用人工材料,比较类别标签、特征相似性与因果关系对归纳推理强度的影响。包括两个实验,实验1比较类别标签与特征相似性对归纳推理的影响,结果表明,当类别标签对归纳推理的影响显著强于特征相似性时,不能将类别标签等同于一个相似性特征。实验2进一步探讨类别标签与因果关系对归纳推理的作用,结果表明,因果关系作用明显强于类别标签的作用。综合两个实验的结果并整合前人相关研究,提出了不同关系影响归纳推理的强度假想。     

The effortful citizen: Discursive social psychology and welfare reform

The present study applies a broadly discursive approach to the representation of welfare reform and unemployment through an analysis of the deployment of an interpretative repertoire of effortfulness in posts to an internet discussion forum. It is argued that when posters construct versions of unemployed people or welfare recipients as characterized by ‘laziness’ or lack of ‘effort’ the attribution of responsibility for unemployment is frequently not the only piece of discursive business being attended to. In addition, posters attend to issues of their own accountability and, significantly, the accountability of the government or welfare system itself for the extent to which welfare recipients are formally held to account. It is argued that this approach extends previous social psychological work on the explanation of unemployment insofar as it pays attention to the context‐specific functions performed by such explanations. Moreover, in orienting to the welfare system as having a responsibility to hold welfare recipients to account, posters are drawing on a set of discursive resources which essentially treat the government of individual psychology as a legitimate function of the welfare system. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Functional role theories of representation and content explanation: with a case study from spatial cognition

The aim of this paper is to show that the widespread opinion, according to which functional role theories of representation fail to account for content explanations of human and animal behaviour, cannot be confirmed with respect to each type of functional role theory. Functional resemblance theories (as referred to by O’Brien and Opie in Representation in mind, Elsevier, 2004) allow for content explanations of successfully performed cognitive abilities as much as for explanations of systematic errors resulting from misrepresentation. How functional roles do their explanatory work in actual scientific research examples is shown by a detailed exploration of model assumptions about homing performances based on path integration mechanisms in humans and animals.

Information learned from generic language becomes central to children’s biological concepts: Evidence from their open-ended explanations

Generic sentences (e.g., “Snakes have holes in their teeth”) convey that a property (e.g., having holes in one’s teeth) is true of a category (e.g., snakes). We test the hypothesis that, in addition to this basic aspect of their meaning, generic sentences also imply that the information they express is more conceptually central than the information conveyed in similar non-generic sentences (e.g., “This snake has holes in his teeth”). To test this hypothesis, we elicited 4- and 5-year-old children’s open-ended explanations for generic and non-generic versions of the same novel properties. Based on arguments in the categorization literature, we assumed that, relative to more peripheral properties, properties that are understood as conceptually central would be explained more often as causes and less often as effects of other features, behaviors, or processes. Two experiments confirmed the prediction that preschool-age children construe novel information learned from generics as more conceptually central than the same information learned from non-generics. Additionally, Experiment 2 suggested that the conceptual status of novel properties learned from generic sentences becomes similar to that of familiar properties that are already at the category core. These findings illustrate the power of generic language to shape children’s concepts.     

因果与权重：决策的眼动模型

结合眼动注视的漂移扩散模型可较好描述个体的决策行为,但尚存两个问题未得解决：注视与决策的因果关系以及决策过程中累积证据的权重问题。本研究采用基于注视的操纵范式考察了基于价值的决策中注视与决策的关系,发现操纵被试对选项的注视时间可影响其选择,注视操纵主要影响决策后期时程,且模型参数估计结果更支持近因模型。研究结果支持了漂移扩散模型的近因假设,为今后的模型发展指明了新方向。